Preliminary Remark

If I look to the agenda of this conference there is a lot about spirituality and therefore I will point out more the aspects of Depth Psychology to generate an extended basis for our discussion and keep spirituality short. No doubt spirituality is key to survive in the VUCA world, but Jungian Depth Psychology can prepare us to make better use of spirituality.

Depth psychology states that psyche is a process that is partly conscious and partly unconscious and partly semi-conscious. In practice, depth psychology seeks to explore underlying motives as an approach to various mental disorders, with the belief that the uncovering of these motives is intrinsically healing (Wikipedia)

At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2015 in Davos, Switzerland 21 - 24 January 2015 for high ranking business leaders and politicians one could feel and see a lack of orientation of the participants and therefore the acronym VUCA was all-over.

One tried to understand why we are in a VUCA-world. They tried to understand with their Ego-mind why we are more and more in a VUCA world and they tried to develop guidelines following old patterns to survive in this world, which never happened before in such an extent. But if we don’t understand the basics and reasons we will fail. Our Ego-mind cannot help us because it is the reason for the dilemma.

I heard that meditation was offered in the morning. Good start, but of course not enough. Without daily practice for years there is no progress.

We are ourselves in us more and more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. As a consequence the collective is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous; as insight so outsight. We are ourselves the reason for this dilemma and don’t know it. We are used to a world view that it is always the others or the world around us.

And now it is our responsibility as individuals to change and improve the world we live in. Change will mean to grow by one’s own psychological individuation and extend the spiritual experience and consciousness.

"If my reading of the symbolism of [Jung's] Aion is correct, the aeon of Aquarius will generate individual water carriers. This will mean that the psyche will no longer be carried by religious communities but instead it will be carried by conscious individuals.

This is the idea C.G. Jung puts forward in his notion of a continuing incarnation, the idea that individuals are to become the incarnating vessels of the Holy Spirit on an ongoing basis." (1)

When the spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti was asked in 1974 to define his own teachings he wrote the following:

"The core of Krishnamurti's teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929 when he said 'Truth is a pathless land'. Man cannot come to it through any organisation, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection." (2)

In a 2008 interview with David Ian Miller of the San Franciso Chronicle, the Astrologer/Philosopher/Humorist Rob Brezny quite aptly summed up Krishnamurti's statement:

"I subscribe to Krishnamurti's principle... he said that 'we need four billion religions.' Now that number is up to 6.5 billion - a religious tradition for everyone on the planet, 6.5 billion paths to God." (3)

Just now we are 7.2 billion.

How long will this loss of orientation last?

I sincerely hope that C.G. Jung is not right:

“The new Age of Aquarius starts with a lot of disruptions and psychic chaos. The beginning phase of the next 2000 years lasts 600 years. It is apocalyptic. I see the coming generations living in this darkness. No very happy prospects.” (4)

C.G. Jung was always right in so many aspects that I believe he is right with his vision.

There are different opinions about the start of the new Aeon, but no doubt we are in this new Aeon. And why lasts the difficult start so long? Well, Jung knows how long it takes before the individual is going to change.

Obviously one can find an understanding and find the solutions if we listen to the experiences of JUNG’s Depth Psychology. He had the visions and imaginations what it means to be a real human being. Jung made us understand that these experiences made by wise individuals prior to Jung’s life are finally the basis of all metaphysic and religions. Therefore his RED BOOK is already called the most important book of this 21st century.

The Red Book is a red leather‐bound folio manuscript crafted by him between 1915 and about 1930. It recounts and comments upon the author’s imaginative experiences between 1913 and 1916, and is based on manuscripts first drafted by Jung in 1914‐15 and 1917. Despite being nominated as the central work in Jung’s oeuvre, it was not published or made otherwise accessible for study until 2009.

Since René Descartes’s “Cogito, ergo sum,” (I think, therefore I am), we haveachieved incredible advances in science, technology, medicine and economics by narrowly focusing upon fulfillment of the Ego, taking an ‘I-centered’ worldview. This has been at the expense of progress on humanistic, personal intrinsic values. Our consciousness is limited to what we think, do, achieve and get. We are not any more aware that we are all a little part of a whole, we lost our holistic view. We have limited our consciousness.

Only the WHOLE PERSON can use the full potential of the UNCOSCIOUSNESS. WHOLENESS means a balance of EGO and SELF, FEMALE and MALE, GOOD and BAD, MIND and SPIRIT.

We are out of balance.

The globalization and digitalization have increased the dimensions of disturbance dramatically.

In times of excessive economic growth most individuals are similarly focusing on their external well- being, diminishing their possibility of internal growth. It is difficult to convince people that external growth cannot represent the meaning of life. The harm resulting from this one - sided mind may be ignored, but the consequences are real. They include loneliness, depression, anxiety, selfishness and suicide to name but a few. We face double digit growth of burn-out, depression and of psycho-pharmaceutical drugs. According to the latest report of a German Health Insurance Company the amounts of absenteeism because of psychic depression increased by 70 % from 2000 to 2013.

We are so much only ego-minded that we have cut off our most important roots and sources.

We have cut our Ego from our SELF

We have cut off our MIND from our SOUL

We man have cut off our MALE from the FEMALE

We women want to be more MALE and cut off our FEMALE

We all man have buried SOPHIA, the divine WISDOM, under our materialistic concrete

We all want to be only GOOD and have suppressed and repressed our DARK side

We have cut off our SPIRIT from our MIND and SOUL

We are not anymore a unity of BODY/MIND-SOUL-SPIRIT

Dürckheim said very often that we have left back our inner instance, our SELF (CG Jung), our divine dimension. Dürckheim calls this instance “essence”.

What is it?

"The essence is the manner in which the trans-space and trans-time BEING wants to manifest in us and in the world!”

To make this possible is the sense of life. It is our task for our whole life. VUCA is hindering us to let these forces manifest.

JUNG reported to have said: "Throughout my practice, I have never found a patient where at the end of the detailed medical history the separation of the numinous was not the cause of all disease."

I am completely convinced that Karl Rahner is right:

For Karl Rahner, who developed a transcendental theology on the basis of transcendental experience, the experience of God is a prerequisite to an ethical behavior that ensures the preservation of our species and our environment. Therefore, he brings his vision to the point:

"The man of the future will be a mystic or he will no longer be!"

Our materialistic world is in a dead end street. What will we become when our most admirable human qualities are perceived as precursors of failure? There is an urgent need for change!

The following quote from John Steinbeck (5) is as relevant today as when it was first uttered: “It has always seemed strange to me...the things we admire in men; kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest; sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egoism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the product of the second.”

For me there is only one concept to survive in the VUCA world of lost orientation.

Take the word orientation seriously (from lat.: oriri….to stand up, rise) and stand up to turn back into the unity of BODY/MIND-SOUL-SPIRIT.

This is hard MIND-work, SOUL-work and SPIRIT-work.

Ground the Ego in your SELF

Build bridges to your SOUL

Balance MALE and FEMALE

Let SOPHIA return

Stop suppressing and repressing your dark side

Accept and integrate your DARK side

Meditate and let your inner values grow

When I look back to my business life of almost 40 years and thereof 20 years on the top level, I have severe doubts that we will convince fast enough the key-persons of the society by just asking for more SPIRITUALITY. They will not understand us and they will see no need. If you never have made spiritual experiences by practices over years you will not understand what we mean.

May well be and I sincerely hope that the young generation of the Centennials have easier access to spirituality as the WISDOM 2.0 conferences, which started in the Bay Area/California, show with their focus on MINDFULNESS and COMPASSION.

C.G.Jung has said very often that the human being will only change under a massive continuing psychic pressure in a personal crisis.

And therefore according to my opinion societies will only change under the massive pressure of an existential crisis.

After 30 years of ZEN-meditation and 20 years of education in Depth Psychology and still being a scholar of Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, who died 1989, I prefer the concept of a

DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY BASED SPIRITUALITY

Depth Psychology and Spirituality can be developed successively or parallel. Many people are stuck with their spirituality programs, especially when they come under pressure in spite of years of practicing.

I do not exclude that spiritual paths as religions, ZEN, contemplation, yoga etc. also lead to liberation from the ego-centered ego, but the dark side is blocking the progress of many of these paths.

As an example Walter Schwery, my Jungian teacher, told me:

‘Yes, that’s familiar to me. Recently a Tibetan monk came to me and said, ‘Mister Schwery, I havea big problem. I have meditated for 20 years, but I still get angry too easily’.

Here, the dark brother has reported despite all the meditation experience. To understand this we therefore must turn to the Jungian Depth Psychology. For me it is just the Depth Psychology in comparison to other psychological approaches which is particularly suitable to stabilize the individual and derive a new ethic for the economy.

“Depth Psychology can guide you to the door of GOD!”

(Brigitte Dorst, Professor for Depth Psychology and Sufism)

Therefore I prefer the following APPROACH PATH:

Start to teach people to use their MIND with all todays possibilities. Help them to do their SOUL-work and support them to let their inner growth develop in spiritual training programs.

MIND

We can use our mind much better in complexity management and/or follow the experience of Quantum Physics.

So we can try to reduce volatility, uncertainty and complexity with high tech tools in complexity management:

There is a new methodology at the holistic level available that allows optimization and decision support in an even more unprecedented degree of coverage along the entire value chain. The methodology of “Simulation-based Complexity Management” integrates advanced simulation and optimization methods for the integrated modeling and optimization of all types of complex-dynamic systems, whether they are global value networks, health systems or energy-relevant coupling between economy and ecology.

Almost 100 years after Heisenberg’s Quantum Physics we understand the reality better and better.

Particles, waves and fields are interpreted as quantum fields.

Hans-Peter DÜRR:

Richard text from you

"Quantum physics tells us that reality is a great spiritual connection and that our world is full of possibilities. We live in a much larger world than we are aware in general.

Life is an amazing phenomenon. With his consciousness and his ability to deliberate action man has climbed a new stage of life. It enables him to perceive the world in a double and quite different ways. He first experienced most directly inside because he, like everything else, is part of this world; and he then learns from another angle about its meaning in its bright consciousness as something outside, detached from himself. "

Dürr has never meditated. But he preferred what he called: “The loving dialogue”. This stabilized himself in the VUCA world and he helped others to find their peace.They created the New together.

This MIND-work extends our consciousness but the dimension is too limited to stabilize the individuals in the VUCA world.

SOUL

C.G. Jung saw the VUCA world coming.

From Lance Owens seminar again about the RED BOOK of C.G.Jung (4):

“Jung’s Vision of the Coming Age

There is a Cycle of nature around us. Our psyche feels that. There are people who are completely unconscious about it and some are superconscious…. “

Jung reported his 3 prophecies. His soul asked him:

“Will you accept what I bring from the depth?”

Jung: “I have no other choice.”

Then his soul found all the terrible arms of the past and the horror which they have done to Mankind. But it found the treasures of all past cultures as well.

Jung: “My Soul pointed to the future and gave me three things. They are:

1. The Misery of war.2. The darkness of Magic.3. And the Gift of Religion.

If you are clever you recognize that these 3 things belong together, the destruction of chaos and the binding of chaos.

War everybody sees it.

Magic is dark and nobody sees it.

Religion is still to come”

1) War---Not only one war-----wars, holocaust and everybody fights each other up to now; wars all over the world. Unbelievable, we have not learned from the past. Up to Now.

2) Second prophecy was Magic. What is it?

Owens: “I think I know what Jung means….

What Jung means with magic is obvious. ..He means the human creative and destructive process. Consider the technological digital development during the last 30 years. The TECHNOS, the creative human ability, exploded. It is growing exponentially, computers, smartphones, laptops, internet etc.

Look at airports, trains, cars, streets, everywhere----

The ATTENTION of humans is sucked out by a VAMPIR of MAGIC!

10 years ago people were talking and reading Books. In my emergency room people under 30 with “Big Big” problems are focusing on their smartphones. What Else is today taking away peoples attention? A lot more.

Where comes the Magic from? It comes out of you as humans, out of the creative fire of this World. Magic is dangerous. It steels us from a moment alone with our own psyche; From our inner voice. After a century of war we are vulnerable. And now we are facing a great danger of this Magic.”

3) Jung: “Now 3. prophecy: Religion. It has Not come yet. But it will.”

According to Dürckheim men are of two origins: outside, secular (Ego) and insight divine (Self).

Owens: “To become aware of the inner World we must give it ATTENTION, we must turn to the depth. Discover the light of an inner sun. Vision, imagination and dreams are doorways. Jung found the real Passage and he did pass through. The inner infinite is the realm of the numinous power. Its no concept or philosophy. It is human experience. If one survives the experience it leads to a vast expansion of consciousness with a new perspective of life and of yourself. Then and only then we finally know what it means to be a human. The inner World has dualistic qualities---light and dark----good and evil----heaven and hell. Consciousness confronts duality. Human history is the story of interaction with this wellspring of all-consciousness. This experience is apart from all metaphysical speculations. It is a confrontation with the mystery of consciousness. How can you help your patients? Not with theories and concepts. Only with your own experience in your life. ….

This is completely different to humanistic and scientific materialism. …

Jung did not want to make a new discovery. He wants to lead us back into our human story. He talks about the evolution of human consciousness. …..

After Gemini the Pisces Aeon started at around Jesus Christ. The wholeness splitted into opposites. Into an upper World and into an underworld. The separated cannot stay separated forever and it will be reunited. Jung’s critic of the Christian Age: Christ was distinguished into 2 opposites: heaven and hell. The error was that it was believed that we are Christ and the Satan in us was denied. We are the light and denied the dark. A secular materialistic world developed. We reached many achievement but with a lack of spiritual growth.”

Jung: “We must understand that heaven and hell is in us. But in darkness there is light and in light there is darkness. It cannot be separated forever and when the Aquarius age is over it will be reunited…. Now we are at the turning point.”

Owens: “ C.G. Jung has seen this vision. In the Age of Aquarius there will be a new type of consciousness. We must learn to understand that Gods and Daemons are in us waiting for reunification. This is “The Individuation Process”. His duty was to open a door to a new Aeon, with a new epic of human consciousness. The RED BOOK is the book for the new Age.”

VUCA may mean 600 years of disruption because for the reunification of the darkness with the light the light in us must be prepared for this integration. As long as our individuation and “spiritualization” is not progressed enough the dark side will manifest in the world without any restriction.

Owens: “But there will be a dawn. As the Old Age fractures an ageless treasure will emerge. The mankind will discover the treasures of the inner world. A new perception will come what it means to be a human. Christ had done his work in the past and now each human being has to do it. This means learning from the suffering of a crucified GOD.”

Jung: ”It is good to be old. We have seen the end of the previous age and the experience of the beginning of the next one with indications to see the reunification.”

SPIRIT

Why are we lost in the VUCA world?

Dürckheim (7) reported a meeting with a well-known entrepreneur and business manager:

Richard this text is from you :

“These people, very often busy, well-educated, conscientious and orderly

well-meaning people are so greatly limited by their mania to be successful that

they believe it can replace all need for their inward growth. The result is a high

performance animal which because of his one sidedness is a mere caricature of

what a human being is meant to be; a unity of body, soul and spirit… If you

would paint such a human being he would have a giant head, a blown-up breast and mechanical limbs of steel which are directed by a tenacious will. But in the middle, where the guiding center of soul and spirit resides would be a vacuum, which is sheltered by an anxious and easily vulnerable Ego. The human being, who corresponds to this picture remains inside a child in spite of all that he knows, all he can do and all he has achieved, because the soul remains small and the spirit is blocked from being able to develop in the person and in his attitude…The result is emptiness, guilt and fear. These symptoms frequently occur in people who seem to be at the top of their career. Others, who aren’t aware of this internal dilemma, may admire their visible façade, but behind the façades an unhappy human being, whose suffering soul and lack of inner peace is the result of having remained an immature individual. Very often these individuals don’t see any other possibility for maintaining a modicum of inner peace than to practice an ironclad self- discipline in order to keep their inner tensions under control. But the suppression of the tensions will not lead to any improvement.

It will result in frustration, anxiety, nervousness and mood swings which will

be followed by a lack of zest for life. These inner problems may be kept under

control in business, but at home family members will suffer the consequences.

When the pressure cannot be contained any longer explosions of impulsiveness will follow. In many cases it ends up as ‘Burn-Out’, depression or some other form of psychological or psychosomatic illness.”

Well, you could not describe the reasons for the bad feeling better and the concept to the inner peace.

Such a top executive could have been in Davos. He has no idea why he is suffering such a lot in VUCA world.

He wanted to be good all his life following the old ethics of the last centuries where the bad was cut off to be only good. This is only possible by permanent suppression and repression into the shadow.

Therefore Jung said very often: “Only good is bad!”

Schwery (8)more about the risk trying to be only good:

Richard Schwery text from you

"In practice, however, to watch over and over again, how many people, especially religious, are able to endeavor a" better person ". Scratch a bit on the facade of this religious correctness, one soon discovers deep uncertainty, a lack of self-esteem and self-acceptance. It creates an urgent need for love and acceptance, and at the same time the dangerous desire to cover the narcisstic wound by religious "goodness", but the root of the problem never heals- on the contrary. "

Erich Neumann (9), scholar of C.G. Jung:

“It is in suppression, that is to say, in the deliberate elimination by ego-consciousness of all those characteristics and tendencies in the personality which are out of harmony with the ethical value, that “the denial of the negative” is most clearly exemplified as a leading principle of the old ethic. Discipline and asceticism are the best-known forms…..”

The heritage of the antiquity has other functions in a modern economy than just discipline and asceticism. It’s only one side of the coin.”

„If man does not reverence and submit to the unconscious, which created his consciousness, he loses his soul, that is, he loses his connection with soul and unconscious.” Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 214.

Neumann further on:

“It is important to notice that in suppression a sacrifice is made which leads to suffering. This suffering is accepted…..and still retains the connection with the ego….

In contrast to suppression, repression may be regarded as the instrument most frequently used by the old ethic to secure the imposition of its values. In repression, the excluded contents and components of the personality which run counter to the dominant and ethical value lose their connection with the conscious system and become unconscious or forgotten-that is to say, the ego is entirely unaware of their existence. Repressed contents, unlike those suppressed, are withdrawn from the control of consciousness and function independently of it; in fact, as depth psychology has shown, they lead an active underground life of their own with disastrous results for both the individual and the collective…..: the complexes of unconsciousness which have been shut from daylight by repression undermine and destroy the world of

consciousness….”

We should not forget:

When we ask people for more spirituality to survive in the VUCA world, we ask a collective which is suppressing and repressing their dark side day by day building up a huge shadow, always ready to explode by the increasing pressure of VUCA.

That’s the reason why spiritual practice is very often not enough to achieve more resilience.

The consciousness of this collective is limited by their Ego-mind. They are like fishes in a little aquarium. They do not know that their aquarium is swimming in the ocean of unlimited unconsciousness. They have built their limiting glass panes. Some aquariums are smaller, some are larger. But mostly they are not large enough. When VUCA is creating turbulences in the ocean they flow around unstable. With an extension of the consciousness the aquariums are becoming larger until one realizes that there are no glass planes anymore. The limitation was an illusion. We are all like waves of the unlimited ocean of unconsciousness.

CONCLUSION

LET YOUR INNER GROWTH DEVELOP

It is the way of deep psychological individuation and ways of spirituality. Both ways can heal what was fallen apart out of the totality of the early childhood. And now the adults must be guided back into wholeness. But initial prerequisite is the reconciliation with the dark side of the person (Schwery).

A very difficult task in your life is the integration of the dark side. How can that be achieved? According to Schwery (8) the first step is the designation of the Evil:

Richard Schwery text from you

"After it has been possible to detect the dark brother as an autonomous content, it is now a matter to give this content a symbolic name. The creation of this symbol is the possibility to take a non-rational content and thus make it more aware .... The designation of the shadow with a symbolic name, e.g. "Dark Brother," prevents us from becoming identical with the shadow, so that we can differentiate ourselves from him. Only if this succeeds, it is possible to grasp it and deal with it on. Jung noted that the psyche has a tendency to personalize these contents and to dramatize, so that they are experienced as dreams, daydreams, hallucinations and visions then. "

The shadow is a vital problem

"As a next step, we should try to see him not as a moral, but as an energetic problem. The shadow is usually very vital, but is hindering live or suppressed energies. Each vital energy, which cannot develop naturally, is negative and destructive ... .. "

Don’t do but let it go

"No longer the male" doing "is the answer to the problem of the shadow, but the merciful female" leave ". Because of this feminine setting out arises that "Serenity", which finally leads to awareness and thus the redemption of the dark brother. "

Inner growth can be achieved little by our ratio or our emotions. It takes place in the trans-psycho- mental space. Overcoming our self-centeredness is a prerequisite. This can be achieved through exercises, which are mainly based on the release of thinking and feeling. It's not about overcoming or destruction of the ego, as required by some esoteric directions. In our society, many suffer from too little ego with disastrous consequences. The ego is very important in our society to make the individual viable. The beginning decades of our life we practice the knowledge and the skills. The “have” has more priority than the “being” to stabilize the ego. Our problem is, though, that we have become one-sided. We have left our SELF (Jung).

I like to call a person, who has only developed his ego-mind and who has left back his inner divine source, a "stretched person". The “point of gravity” has moved up to our head. The wholeness of the person has fallen apart. The more they grow up with the mind and leave back the heart, the more tension they build up. This tension leads to psychological and physical problems and diseases.

It is about the development of the "whole person". Person comes from the Latin. "personare", that is, to sound through. In Greek tragedy tinged with the actors through the mask (persona) the message of the gods. This is individuation by JUNG. By letting the ego go, we get to be grounded in the SELF.

Pater Lasalle, Jesuit and Zen-Master, was asked what the secret of meditation is. He said: "Ground yourself, rise up and let the mind go!"

So to be a whole person and not getting stuck with the pronounced egocentricity and egoistic of the child's socialization, we must have a daily practice of exercise in which we practice to let the ego. Then as grace the maturation of the essence is flowing into us.

Ways such as meditation, prayer and contemplation, Judo, Kyodo (archery), Aikido, Yoga and many other ways are available. If we practice alone we will have little success, so we need a teacher. It is essential that the exercise is practiced as an “exercitium” of every day.

We may also enter into spaces of experience to practice mindfulness. We are already daily in these spaces as our work, music, art, nature, dance, illness, encounters, ... The whole daily life can be used for meditation, described in my book "Living in The Golden Wind" (10)

The result is a life full of equanimity, serenity, humor, compassion, harmony, humanity and love for others protecting their dignity; the human being will never harm others or the environment and finds his inner peace in private life and in business life.

Once a week yoga atrophied to the gym and does not continue. We need our mind only for the decision to make us on the chosen path and stay on it. Then we do not need the mind anymore, it disturbs us with all its attachments. During the years of practicing we feel more and more our inner peace and we win

"TRANSPARENCY FOR THE IMMANENT TRANSCENDENCE”

as DÜRCKHEIM defines the meaning of life. Such a person does not need a code of ethics and laws more. The person acts out of their given divine experience. The whole person does never lose orientation; whether it is VUCA or not.

Lance Owens in his seminar about the RED BOOK of C.G. Jung did a lot for me to understand the VUCA world better.

He quotes Jung:

“It starts with a few people with the vision for the new Age. They will be the light in the darkness. Guides and Hope. And a blessing for the future generations. …..

Destiny depends on the consciousness of this few who will be more and more. A new religion is coming up. But you must not deny the call from the Depth…

What a great honor to live NOW and be ONE of the new guides. The treasury is in your Depth.”

We here at the conference and all others at similar conferences are the few to convince a huge amount of people in the economy and society.

If you like to know how to survive in the VUCA world after all my words:

“Exhaust your words, empty your thoughts,

For then you may come to recognize this One

Essence”

Back Up

“There is a reality even prior to heaven and earth Indeed it has no form, much less a name. Eyes fail to see it; It has no voice for ears to detect; To call it Mind or Buddha violates its nature, For it then becomes like a visionary flower in the air; It is not Mind, nor Buddha; Absolutely quiet, and yet illuminating in a mysterious way, It allows itself to be perceived only by the clear-eyed. It is Dharma truly beyond form and sound. It is Tao having nothing to do with words. Wishing to entice the blind The Buddha has playfully let words escape his golden mouth. Heaven and earth are ever since filled with entangling briars. O my good worthy friends gathered here If you desire to listen to the thunderous voice of the Dharma, Exhaust your words, empty your thoughts, For then you may come to recognize this One Essence.Says Hui the Brother, "The Buddha's Dharma Is not to be given up to mere human sentiments."

(Dai-o Kokushi, 1235 – 1308)

Back Up

Depth psychology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Historically, depth psychology (from the German term Tiefenpsychologie), was coined by Eugen Bleuler to refer to psychoanalytic approaches to therapy and research that take the unconscious into account.[1] The term was rapidly accepted in the year of its proposal (1914) by Sigmund Freud, to cover a topographical view of the mind in terms of different psychic systems.[2]

Depth psychology has since come to refer to the ongoing development of theories and therapies pioneered by Pierre Janet, William James, and Carl Jung as well as Freud, which explore the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious (thus including both psychoanalysis and Jungian psychology).[3]

Summary of primary elements

Depth psychology states that psyche is a process that is partly conscious and partly unconscious and partly semi-conscious. In practice, depth psychology seeks to explore underlying motives as an approach to various mental disorders, with the belief that the uncovering of these motives is intrinsically healing. It seeks the deep layers underlying behavioral and cognitive processes. The initial work and development of the theories and therapies by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler and Otto Rank have resulted in three main perspectives on depth psychology in modern times:

The unconscious contains repressed experiences and other personal-level issues in its "upper" layers and "transpersonal" (e.g. collective, non-I, archetypal) forces in its depths. The semi-conscious contains or is, an aware pattern of personality, including everything in a spectrum from individual vanity to the personality of the workplace.[citation needed]

Archetypes are primordial elements of the Collective Unconscious in the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. Archetypes form the unchanging context from which the contents of cyclic and sequent changes derive their meanings. Duration is the secret of action.[4]

The psyche spontaneously generates mythico-religious symbolism or themes, and is therefore spiritual or metaphysical, as well as instinctive, in nature. An implication of this is that the choice of whether to be a spiritual person may be beyond the individual, whether and how we apply it, including to nonspiritual aspirations.

All minds, all lives, are ultimately embedded in some sort of myth-making in the form of themes or patterns. Mythology is therefore not a series of old explanations for natural events, but rather the richness and wonder of humanity played out in a symbolical, thematic, and patterned storytelling.

Criticism

Fredric Jameson considers postmodernism to reject depth models such as Freud's, in favor of a set of multiple surfaces consisting of intertextual discourses and practices.[5]

Esotericism criticises depth psychologies (including the Jungian) for reducing the numinal to the inward alone, and for excessive reliance on the exp